In conventional capping machines, a vertically operative chuck or capping head assembly having gripping jaws is provided for gripping a cylindrical cap and threading the cap onto the bottle neck. Specifically, the chuck is positioned in generally vertical alignment with the cap and is lowered along a downward path so as to grip with gripping jaws a threaded cap which is generally vertically aligned over a threaded bottle neck, whereupon the chuck is further lowered so as to position the cap on the bottle neck. The chuck is then rotated, thereby also rotating the cap and threading the cap onto the bottle neck. Thereafter, the chuck is vertically raised, and thereby removed from the cap, whereupon the assembled bottle and cap move to a next assembly station. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,598 to Van Zijp.
Yet, in several instances caps are formed with a shroud and spout that extends radially outward beyond the outer diameter of the cylindrical cap. Conventionally, the spout has been fixed with the cap. With this arrangement, when the cap rotates, the spout rotates with the cap.
An early practice was to mount such caps on bottles manually by an operator placing the bottles on a turntable and then screwing on the closure by hand. This requires considerable time and labor is not readily available for this type of work. In addition, the tightness of the closure is left to the feeling of the operator so that the bottles often are not tightly closed.
One effort to mechanize this operation have included an apparatus wherein pairs of cooperating friction wheels are mounted in the conveyor path of the bottles. The bottles with the closures are moved between the friction wheels which are spring-biased against each other to grip the closures. The friction wheels must run at a high rotary speed since the closures are held only briefly between the wheels. Even at high rotary speeds, it is not always possible to screw on the closures tightly during the brief period of time they are clamped between the friction wheels and, furthermore, the high rotary speed causes damage to the closures. It is impossible to exert a uniform, constant torque since each friction wheel has its own friction coupling. In addition, the structure is relatively complex and correspondingly expensive.
Other efforts include relatively complex machinery providing a vertically operative chuck or capping head assembly having gripping jaws adapted for gripping a cylindrical cap base and threading the cap base onto the bottle neck without interference from the shroud and spout. Such vertically operative chucks or capping head assemblies must subsequently be likewise able to disengage from the cap base without interference from the shroud and spout. To accomplish the foregoing the shroud and spout remain in the same relative position and the vertically operative chuck or capping head assembly requires relatively complex structure to allow movement of the gripping jaws. Exemplary of such vertically orientated approaches and attendant complex arrangements are U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,929 to Schindel, U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,048 to Wywocki, U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,527 to Zanini et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,584,161 to Zanini et al.
An embodiment of the invention provides a torque head assembly and method of capping which encounters a cap base from a generally horizontal plane with respect thereto thus avoiding many of the problems encountered in the above-outlined capping apparatus and the relatively complex machine structure previously associated with vertically operative chucks or capping head assemblies. Numerous other advantages and features of the invention will become readily apparent from the accompanying drawings and the following detailed description of the invention.